


Carpe Diem

by i_am_cloud



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Closeted Characters, Coming of Age, Drama, F/M, Friendship, Language, M/M, Romance, Underaged Smoking, mention of suicide, underaged drinking, underaged partying, wlw oc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29396292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_cloud/pseuds/i_am_cloud
Summary: Eva is one of four girls chosen to attend Welton Academy. With a strict set of rules, as well as making sure she honors her father's legacy, she doesn't expect to have a thrilling senior year. But when her English teacher drastically changes how she learns, Eva must make a decision: continue to live up to the expectations placed on her, or allow herself to seize the day.
Relationships: Charlie Dalton/Original Character(s), Chris Noel/Knox Overstreet, Ginny Danbury/Gerard Pitts
Kudos: 1





	1. Five Centuries of Verse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is rated T for: Language; underaged drinking, smoking, and partying; and mention of suicide.
> 
> Disclaimer: Except my OCs and original plotlines, I do not own Dead Poets Society – book or film.

**To Be Read at the Opening of D.P.S. Meetings**

_"I went to the woods because I wished to_ _live_ _deliberately,_ _to front_

_only the essential_ _facts_ _of_ _life, and see if I could not_ _learn_ _what_ _it_

_had to_ _teach, and not, when I came to die,_ _discover_ _that I had not lived."_

\- _Walden,_ Henry David Thoreau


	2. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Except my OCs and original plotlines, I do not own Dead Poets Society – book or film.

Since she was a little girl, autumn had been Eva's favorite season. She loved how the leaves changed from a vibrant green to a crisp yellow. She loved the chill the air held – a mix of a comfortable warmth and a tolerable cold. She loved the excitement of Halloween and the familial togetherness of Thanksgiving. She also loved the sight of birds flying North, chirping a distant song as they flew among the clouds.

Eva was lucky to have seen many falls, a privilege she tried not to take for granted. Every candle added to her birthday cake, viewing of _Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve,_ and wrinkle she couldn't hide with makeup were a blessing – reminders that the smallest of things matter, too.

Because nobody can have one without the other, there'd been plenty of troubling moments to go with the good: making decisions where she needed to keep more than herself in mind, heated fights with family and friends, losing those who she wished stayed longer than they had. . . .

All of it was worth it, though, even the nights where Eva felt as if a part of her had been forcefully carved away. They'd helped her acknowledge the precious fragility of life; that the terrifying feeling of hopelessness doesn't last forever.

A younger Eva wouldn't have believed that there's a light hidden within the darkness, that there are others who know what it's like to be stifled beneath a mountain of expectations.

She'd learned so much. Of course, she had. When you're around for at least a few decades, a lesson or two tends to seep into your veins. Pushing you to grow, to achieve what you'd once assumed to be impossible.

With her feet planted on a long-forgotten dock, Eva gazed across the lake she'd known in her youth. The last time she was here was a morning filled with freshly fallen snow and anguished screams. She had been numbly shaken to her core, unable to think beyond the ache that flamed within her chest.

And while her heart broke, those who had lives to continue living woke and ate and taught and listened. They knew nothing of what occurred just outside their windows, only that they must keep moving forward like the obedient ants they were.

The passing years had helped soothe that day's wounds, but they had never healed. Not completely.

As Eva observed the body of calm, blue water, events that transpired fifty years prior enveloped her.

What an experience it had been, her brief schooling at Welton Academy – a place she expected would be unbearably lonely. By some miracle, those fleeting months held countless memories she fondly carried with her – through the cutting of ties, the most painful funerals, and the hours spent in her mother's sterile hospital room.

Had she known then what she knew now, she could have taken comfort in the fact that things would someday be less suffocating. Then again, it might not have made much of a difference.


End file.
